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5 Great Sites for Free Vintage Ephemera and Downloadable Images

If the search for good quality vintage decorative collectibles and other items is difficult,   it can be just as or even  more difficult to find high quality, free vintage ephemera images to use for your digital scrapbooking or DIY craft projects.   

You can find yourself spending hours searching on Google, Flickr or Bing, just to find a good quality image and then to find out that the terms of use (TOU) limits you solely to your own personal  DIY crafts or the image can not be used for commercial purposes at all which includes, using the image online or on your web page or blog designs.

Vintage Online Resources

To some degree, I can understand the blog owner’s restrictions, too often unscrupulous blog visitors will download images and then repackage them as downloadable images, post them for resale on CDs, on their own websites, or sell them as digital collage sheets sold on Etsy or other online sites.  This is the dark side of having access to free authentic , vintage downloadable images. 

For the most part, what these visitors fail to understand is that there are copyright laws that protect blog site owners and their  scanned photos or images. 

On the bright side though, most vintage ephemera blog site owner’s  usually provide generous terms of use to their readers  because they know it improves web traffic and increased visits to their sites.  So there usually is a generous, kind community that develops around these blogs and sites.

I expect that this blog’s readers are above these concerns or practices, but even so that doesn’t change the fact that it is still difficult finding these images and blog owners with generous terms of use.

I just wanted to let you know about some of the better, free high quality vintage image resources that are available and I have found online.  

By high quality images, I mean either downloadable images  saved as .jpegs or .png files at 72 dpi for use on the web or images at 300 dpi as pdf files which are suitable for printing.

 Very often you might find free images but either the download sites are filled with computer bugs or excessive ads or the images are low resolution quality and require a lot of digital cleanup work.

So I compiled these sites as sites that provide great images and have generous terms of use.   At least a couple of these sites are owned by professional graphic designers, and they provide high resolution images in zipped files and downloadable sites that are safe and bug free.

Great Vintage Image  Sites Online

graphic's fairy website

 

Graphics Fairy– this site has numerous , high-quality vintage images, digital papers, textures, and other embellishments often saved as either .jpg or .png files. According to her blog intro she has over 3,500 images and according to her own description she is a self-proclaimed Franco-phile.   So, if you are interested in French vintage images as well as other vintage images, this is the place to go.

Those marked as .png files are digital files that show the image with a transparent background so that you can overlay them on your digital projects.  She provides images as pdf files as well.  On occasion, she includes reverse images that are suitable for iron-on transfer.  She also has her own boards on Pinterest with free downloadable vintage resources that you can follow to access even more vintage images.

website screenshot

 

Just Something I Made – A professional graphic designer, and often featured in Country Living and other magazines, her website has a host of vintage ephemera freebies as well as links to label companies who host her kitchen and home label design templates on pdf.  You can find a host of high-quality, vintage labels designed by Cathe Holden on Worldlabel and made available for free.

Vintage Moth website screenshot

 

The Vintage Moth– this site has an eclectic mixture of vintage ephemera and images. By eclectic, I mean the type of images that are not solely geared to home decor or Etsy syle type of images for tags and party decor.  The images are accessed via the right-click feature if you are using a PC or via your mouse if you are using a MAC.

Sweetly Scrapped website screenshot

 

Sweetly Scrapped –  A blog with an eclectic mixture of vintage items, from postcards, photographs, vintage advertising, etc.  The navigation on this blog is a little difficult but there are a host of vintage images to select.

fuzzimo website

 

Fuzzimo – a professional graphic designer who provides high-quality images of frames, backgrounds, etc., notebook paper and other vintage elements.  He provides an assortment of vintage items for professional graphic designers.   His site is not geared to vintage ephemera but he has elements that can work with digital scrapbooking designs or blog images.  He also has a flexible terms of use policy.  However, some of his free downloads to have commercial use restrictions.

Well, that’s the round-up.  I hope you enjoy these sites and they help you in your search for high quality vintage images for your DIY crafts or digital scrapbooking projects.

That’s the roundup of blogs or website, but I do want to mention that you don’t forget Flickr’s Creative Commons website or their Vintage Ephemera Swap Group.

However, if you want vintage ephemera images from this site you will need to pay attention to the license posted by each account as the licenses  vary per image.

 

This also is not a permanent list, I’ll be adding new resources as I find them in my constant search for vintage images to use in my crafting projects.

Related Post:

What is Ephemera? Paper By Another Name

 

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How to Use PicMonkey to Kickstart Your Photo Editing Skills

PicMonkey-Main-Page

If you were disappointed when Piknik the free online photo editing site went offline and closed up shop in early spring of last year, you needn’t despair because one of the best free online photo editing sites has found a new life as PicMonkey. ( On their website, PicMonkey claims that former staff workers for Piknik moved to  PicMonkey and the others were absorbed into Google staff when they were  bought out by Google+.) [Read more…]

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Vintage Circus Collectibles – Collectibles Worthy of A Smile

 

Clown figurines  and other vintage circus collectibles are a popular collecting area for many antique and vintage collectors.  Here’s a little history on the origin of clowns…Clowns have always been a part of many cultures, and the art of clowning has existed for many centuries.

Although clowns in the past, were usually found in the courts of kings and queens ( I imagine everybody needed a laugh from the important matters of state that were part of daily court life) clowns can be traced as far back as the courts of Pharoah.  A pygmy clown performed as a jester in the court of Pharaoh Dadkeri-Assi during Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty about 2500 B.C.  and court jesters have performed in China since 1818 B.C.

When the Spanish Conqueror, Cortez , conquered the Aztecs in what is now the state of Mexico, Cortez was surprised to discover clowns in the court of Montezuma.  It is said that dwarf clowns, and hunchbacked buffoons were among the “wonders” that Cortez took back to Europe and presented to Pope Clement VII.

However, these clowns and other clowns of that time period, with their outrageous dress and crazy antics often wielded power and influence in royal courts, and their role varied from the clowns we know today.

Our modern day clowns can give credit to Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837) who elevated the art of clowning to a theatrical fine art.  He is credited for moving away from the harlequin type of clown of that day and was the first to use whiteface in his performances.  A superb and engaging entertainer, he developed elaborate tricks and special effects.

Around 1874, two entertainers James McIntyre and Tom Heath developed the tramp characterization with which most people are familiar with.

Although, there is controversy over the exact origins of the tramp clown some say they represented  the traveling “hoe boys,” or itinerant farm workers, who rode the rails from one town to another, often in rag tag clothing and covered with soot. They were known as hoe boys (or hobos).  Famous clowns among this type of character are Emmett Kelly Jr. as “Weary Willie” the son of an equally famous clown Emmett Kelly Sr.

Emmett Kelly was a clown whose fame had become so notable, he was known throughout the world and was designated as one of the World’s most famous clowns.  In 1972 Emmett Kelly, Jr., with help from his manager, established his own national circus.   His circus was the only circus to perform at the White House, not just once but twice—once in 1972 and again in 1973 during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

Emmet Kelly, Jr.’s image and the image of other notable clowns are often available in prints, figurines and circus playbills and there is an active collecting community in this hugely popular genre.

Companies such as Lladro, Murano Glass , Flambro and other porcelain companies sell clown and harlequin figurines and other items that range in price from several dollars to a couple of thousand. In addition, there are many groups that collect paper and other circus collectibles from all around the world, some of these groups can be located on Flickr.

However, figurines are not the only objects that circus collectors purchase.  According to Kovels, an antique price guide and collectibles publisher, circus collectors  “look for posters, programs, popcorn bags, paper fans, toys, food tickets and pennants, the older or more unusual the better.

A Barnum & Bailey’s  circus toy (circa 1900s)  is a tin wind-up truck made by Strauss Toys of Germany.  It’s 9 inches long and sold for $360 at a Morphy auction in Pennsylvania.

vintage-circus-performer

In my opinion, I find clown and circus collectibles beautiful and fun as they bring back fond memories of going to the circus when I was a child.  However, there are some people who fear clowns perhaps as a result of so many horror movies that have typified clowns as scary and repulsive.

In addition, not only are clown figurines popular but clown or circus ephemera collectibles are  also very popular, either for party decor, altered art or other DIY craft projects.

In any case, whatever your wallet size may be, you’ll be sure to find a clown figurine suitable to your pocketbook and budget– a memory of a clown or an event that made you laugh!

 

Credits:

Images via Flickr = Double M ~ Mary Margret

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